


Skidding Offroad

by Jo_busch_got_booty



Category: Attack on Titan, Shingeki no Kyojin, aot, snk - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anime, F/F, Manga, Music shop, homeless, modern day AU, musical artist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 15:57:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3494261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_busch_got_booty/pseuds/Jo_busch_got_booty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ymir and Krista meet unexpectedly, and like a snowball, it rolls on from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skidding Offroad

* * *

We met during a snowstorm, on the third story of a run-down hotel. She was slipping those little soaps into her bag, wide blue eyes searching frantically around her as she did so-- in other words, she was the epitome of suspicious behavior. Not that you could have guessed that if she hadn’t been hunched over the sink in my hotel room, shoveling any toiletries she could reach into her purse; blonde hair fell just past her shoulders, tickling her shoulder blades under a poor excuse for a winter coat, her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth in concentration. Her hand skimmed a pile of hair ties, nearly pushing them into the bag. I cleared my throat.

The girl- I swear to god- squeaked. She reeled back, dropping the bag to the ground. It landed on its side, sending the contents sprawling all over the suspiciously sticky floor. In it was a small bottle of my favorite shampoo. I leaned over and plucked it up from the rummage-- She stared at me trembling.

Under her eyes were dark half-moons, weeks of unkept nights wearing down.

“I thought you looked pretty suspect,” I admitted. “But I’m not sure if it was because there was a stranger in my hotel room, or because you were eyeing my eyeliner up like it was water in a desert.” Her hair was bunched, knotted in some places as if she had been laying on it, and tossing around wildly.

“I-I’m so-- I--” Her voice was sweet, smooth. I raised an eyebrow. Her clothes were ratty, jeans torn, and under them were thinned leggings, with frost caught in between the two fabrics. Her hair was smoggy, as if she had spent too long out by running cars, and her face was roughly washed and red, like she had rubbed half-frozen snow onto it in a weak attempt to clean it off.

“You look like more of a Sweet Pea than a Hawaiian Breeze kind of gal, anyway,” I added, She swallowed, and seemed to shrink away as I bent down to collect whatever was mine from the wreckage. I let her keep the flowery hotel soaps, though. They dried my skin out anyway.

I eyed her up, her fingers tapped nervously against the side of her thigh, more twitchy than anything. She was short, barely reaching my chin, but she looked sturdy enough-- it was obvious enough she had spent more than a couple nights raiding motel rooms.What exactly she was looking for, though, I wasn’t sure. She looked at me expectantly, seeming to pull away, shoulders tilting inward, back hunching just slightly. I contemplated a moment, watching her squirm with mild curiosity.

I saw her eyes wander to the exit, It was then I decided to speak:

“What’s your name, kid?” She stared at me, eyes flitting between my face and the edges of the doorway. I sighed, and rolled my own, a hand landing on my hip. I considered, but decided that the majority of her stash wasn’t even mine. No harm done. “I’m not turning you in,” I promised. Maybe I sounded sincere (I was, I swear), but she complied, albeit reluctantly.

Her eyes widened, lips parted slightly in surprise. I bit my lip to keep from smirking. “K… Krista,” she said faintly. Her voice was gentle, mild. She was tepid, untrusting, and so I forced a small smile onto my face. I hoped I didn’t look like a murderer. Jeager from back home always said my smile was unsettling… I guess that especially rang true after I catch someone attempting to loot my stuff. Jeager was always too much of a scaredy-cat to even attempt that. That, and he always had his sister watching him: she was about ninety-nine point nine percent of his impulse control if I’m going to be brutally honest.

“Right. Krista. Fitting.” It matched the softness of her face. I turned on my heels, catching her glancing at the door again before she left my sign of vision. I motioned for her to follow, and to my surprise, she did. “Okay, here’s the deal Krista. I won’t turn you in, because you didn’t technically steal anything of mine,” I risked a peek behind me, to see her staring in confusion. “But I need you to give me directions somewhere.”

“Directions…?” There was smoke coming out of her ears, and she nodded slowly as the cogs turned. “But why…”

“Because I’ll never make friends in this city if I call the police on everyone who tries to raid my toiletries.” I flopped down onto the bed, leaning back against the headrest. A moment of thought later, I passed her the throw blanket.  “I’m Ymir.”

“Ymir.” Her voice was cautious as she repeated, and I had to admit, the way my name rolled off her tongue made me smile. She pronounced it correctly, “ee-meer.” Even after I’ve corrected people multiple times, it almost always ends up pronounced “yih-mir.” It’s also why that horseface Jean Kirstein is in my phone as “Gene.” The little shit. I’d have some BS name for that Jeager kid too, but unfortunately it’s hard to mispronounce “Eren.”

“Spelled Y-M-I-R. I’m a substitute teacher’s worst nightmare.” She stared at me stiffly, but something light flashed in her eyes. “You don’t have to stand there,” I said, waving loosely at a ratty armchair in the corner of the room. Carefully, she sat.

“You needed directions?” Wow. Pushy. Then again, if a random stranger was staring me down in a run-down hotel room in a crappy part of the city after I tried to steal their shampoo, I’d be suspicious as well.

“Yeah. I’m looking for Smith’s Records.” I tugged at my ponytail to tighten it. “It’s on Oakwood Avenue, I know that, but I don’t know A) Where Oakwood Avenue is od B) How to get to Oakwood Avenue.” Further than that, I didn’t even know what street I was on now. I had simply pulled into the cheapest looking hotel with the closest parking. It was that or sleep in my car, because I wasn’t going to drive whilst the roads were turning to sheets of ice beneath the wheels of my buggy. I wasn’t putting my green little baby in danger like that.

“Do you have a pen on you?” I complied, reaching over onto the end table to pull the pen off of the little notepad. It was chained down, though, and the entire stack of paper hit me in the nose. A string of cuss words slipped from my lips, a minute and three different languages later, I sighed irritably and I tossed the entire thing to Krista. I rubbed the bridge of my nose as she caught it, eyeing me with wonder.

“Alright,” she started, beginning to scribble something onto the pad, “So what you’re going to want to do is take a right once you get onto the main road, and then from there a left onto South Street…” Krista went on to explain exactly where and when to turn, warning me about road signs that would trip me up, because  there were tall bushes in front of them, or not to speed on whatever street because cops usually parked out behind one dumpster or another. She alternated between speaking and writing (multi-tasking obviously wasn’t her strong suit), and when she wrote, it was with complete concentration. The tip of her tongue hung from the corner of her mouth. When she finished, she tossed the pad to me. I missed, or maybe her toss was short, because the corner of it slammed into my shin. I let out a hiss, and she apologized rapidly, hand rushing to her mouth. She seemed to shrink further away from me, molding into the seat behind her,  

“It’s just a block of paper,” I reassured, (it still hurt) tossing it back onto the table. It skidded to the edge, but didn’t slide off.

Her arms were wrapped around her knees, and she pulled the blanket tight around her. With her size, she looked like a mildly large burrito.

With a heavy sigh, I leaned over the side of the bed to grab my jacket off of the floor. It was nothing too fancy,just heavy cloth with faux fur on the inside, but Krista still pulled away when I tried to toss it over to her. “There’s twenty dollars in one of the pockets,” I said, “Go buy yourself a hot meal, go gambling and get yourself more money, I don’t really care what you do with it.”

“I can’t-- I couldn’t take--” She shook her head, and raised stared at the hunk of cloth on the floor by her feet. A piece of the hood had landed on her toe, and she ripped her foot out from under it hurriedly.

“You didn’t have an issue with taking my stuff twenty minutes ago,” I reminded pointedly. Her brow furrowed, and again I bit my lip to hide my expression. “So just take it before I change my mind.”

Krista stared at the jacket for a moment, considering, but took it with a polite nod of her head. “Thank you so much- and I’m so sorry about earlier, I just--”

**  
**“Don’t apologize. Just don’t get caught next time. Prison’s a bitch.” She nodded eagerly, until I finally waved, and then she straightened, thanking me one more time before leaving. I watched her until the door slammed shut, her hair running across her shoulder blades as she walked, how she seemed to have a bit more of a jump in her step (I wonder if she stole my shampoo after all). I felt around on the table for the notepad, too lazy to look over. The page was filled with her messy scrawl. I had been expecting loops of graceful handwriting, something I could read, but this was not it. The letters were small, shaky, and most of the ink was smeared, as if she had just been running her hand along over it as she wrote. Groaning, I dropped the paper back down onto the table and fell back onto my pillows. I’d have to see if my GPS was in the mood to help me tomorrow morning, and so I pulled my weak excuse for a cell phone out of my pocket tiredly, and set the alarm for twenty minutes earlier. I have a tendency to get lost.

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to my Editor friend Lynn for staying up outrageous hours to fix the giant effing hole that appeared at midnight!
> 
> Alright, first chapter's kinda slow, I edited for a few hours, cried a bit, ate a muffin, texted my friends complaining about writing-- I think it went well.


End file.
